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It seems like Musk has decided that if humans can drive visually, then cars can. Why did he choose this line? That is, if humans only need two eyes to drive, t

It seems like Musk has decided that if humans can drive visually, then cars can. Why did he choose this line? That is, if humans only need two eyes to drive, then why not just only use two cameras? Isn't using more than two cameras (and radar) admitting that cars need more "help" than humans? If using more than two cameras is okay, why not go further and use LIDAR or HD-mappings? I believe that Musk chose this line because he knows that LIDAR (in its current state) is too expensive to sell to consumers. Same with HD-mapping. We know that LIDAR based systems have achieved "better" self-driving than camera based systems. It's still possible that Musk is correct. But at present, it seems to me that Musk's position therefore seems like a mostly ideological stance, and not based on any real data. That's why people doubt Tesla's ability to execute on Level 4/5 self driving. The market will punish ideological purists when they are wrong.

fastball 6y ago
Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. This is not the case with Tesla's sensing package, which is racking up the miles as we speak. So sure, expense makes it less appealing from a consumer perspective, but its also possible that the difficulty of deploying LIDAR fleets makes it less likely to achieve FSD in the short term due to less capacity to generate training data. Long-term we'll probably want all our vehicles to have as many sensors as is feasible. But nobody trying to get to FSD today is worried about what it will look like in 100 years – they're all trying to get their first.
- ra7 6y ago
  > Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. Er, Waymo is doing a commercial L4 service. Cruise is doing pretty good. So no, they are not all "ideological positions". Also, no one except Tesla is targeting L5 which should tell you what the realistic goal is. > You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. LIDAR is expensive was a good argument in 2015. The prices are plummeting. Waymo reduced their top of line LIDAR cost from $75,000 to under $7500 and this was in 2017. They sell their short range LIDAR (Honeycomb) for under $1000. And their 5th gen hardware costs even less now (my guess is under $5000). Which way do you think the price will go as a number of companies mass produce it? The fact is Elon made a bad bet a few years ago and didn't anticipate how much the cost would drop. Now Tesla is stuck with his ideological stance trying make a pipe dream work.
  - fastball 6y ago
    From what I've seen of Tesla's FSD beta, it could very probably be T4 if Tesla geofenced certain areas and worked out any particular kinks manually. T4 with geofencing is a far cry from T4 on any road anywhere. That last sentence seems like a strange one. "Stuck" would be if you massively invested in LIDAR and it didn't help. If no-LIDAR FSD is not as feasible as Tesla hopes, they can just... use LIDAR. And they'll arguably be in a better position tahn early adopters because they weren't investing when the hardware was expensive.
    - ra7 6y ago
      > Waymo's commercial service is L5, no? Waymo is L4. L5 means it can take you to your favorite campground (anywhere) and handle any scenario. Waymo says it’s not a realistic goal. But yes, the normal levels are not very well defined. > If no-LIDAR FSD is not as feasible as Tesla hopes, they can just... use LIDAR. Tesla has promised the current fleet has all the necessary hardware to make it work (they couldn’t possibly know this at the time). So they can’t walk back on that without incurring huge costs for retrofitting existing cars and development cost for overhauling their tech stack. Meanwhile, they would’ve sunk money and time pursuing a much harder problem. If they had used additional sensors from the beginning, they could’ve provided much more value to their paying customers by now. Edit: Just saw your edit. > From what I've seen of Tesla's FSD beta, it could very probably be T4 if Tesla geofenced certain areas and worked out any particular kinks manually. Yes, that’s what they should have done. Make realistic promises. I mean, you’re talking about making it work on _any_ road, _any_ intersection and _any_ scenario. Without additional sensors and mapping, it’s seems pretty unlikely (if not impossible) to me. Certainly given the timeframe Elon Musk promises.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Part of the question is how useful the data sent back by random customer-owned vehicles is. It's your own fleet that's collecting the really good detailed data. And adding LIDAR to your own fleet isn't tremendously expensive. You don't have to worry about an extra 10k per vehicle crippling your sales.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Clearly adding LIDAR do your own fleet is tremendously expensive, otherwise Waymo would have 10,000 LIDAR-equipped cars driving around.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      The reason they have less than a thousand cars isn't because LIDAR is expensive. They've spent billions of dollars and enough LIDAR units to double their fleet size would only cost 3-4 million.
Diederich 6y ago
This is a pretty accurate analysis. Level 4+ using only cameras is risky and aspirational. In truth, most of Elon Musk's high level goals are risky and aspirational. So far his record is pretty good, but eventually one or more are likely to fail.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Look at how many times spacex has drastically changed their hardware plans while designing something. The track record of making things work is good, but it's a very different kind of problem when you're allowed to redesign.

fastball 6y ago

Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. This is not the case with Tesla's sensing package, which is racking up the miles as we speak. So sure, expense makes it less appealing from a consumer perspective, but its also possible that the difficulty of deploying LIDAR fleets makes it less likely to achieve FSD in the short term due to less capacity to generate training data. Long-term we'll probably want all our vehicles to have as many sensors as is feasible. But nobody trying to get to FSD today is worried about what it will look like in 100 years – they're all trying to get their first.

ra7 6y ago
> Nobody has demonstrated L 4/5, so all positions are ideological ones. Er, Waymo is doing a commercial L4 service. Cruise is doing pretty good. So no, they are not all "ideological positions". Also, no one except Tesla is targeting L5 which should tell you what the realistic goal is. > You could also argue that because LIDAR is expensive, it's hard to get billions of miles of training from LIDAR-equipped vehicles. LIDAR is expensive was a good argument in 2015. The prices are plummeting. Waymo reduced their top of line LIDAR cost from $75,000 to under $7500 and this was in 2017. They sell their short range LIDAR (Honeycomb) for under $1000. And their 5th gen hardware costs even less now (my guess is under $5000). Which way do you think the price will go as a number of companies mass produce it? The fact is Elon made a bad bet a few years ago and didn't anticipate how much the cost would drop. Now Tesla is stuck with his ideological stance trying make a pipe dream work.
- fastball 6y ago
  From what I've seen of Tesla's FSD beta, it could very probably be T4 if Tesla geofenced certain areas and worked out any particular kinks manually. T4 with geofencing is a far cry from T4 on any road anywhere. That last sentence seems like a strange one. "Stuck" would be if you massively invested in LIDAR and it didn't help. If no-LIDAR FSD is not as feasible as Tesla hopes, they can just... use LIDAR. And they'll arguably be in a better position tahn early adopters because they weren't investing when the hardware was expensive.
  - ra7 6y ago
    > Waymo's commercial service is L5, no? Waymo is L4. L5 means it can take you to your favorite campground (anywhere) and handle any scenario. Waymo says it’s not a realistic goal. But yes, the normal levels are not very well defined. > If no-LIDAR FSD is not as feasible as Tesla hopes, they can just... use LIDAR. Tesla has promised the current fleet has all the necessary hardware to make it work (they couldn’t possibly know this at the time). So they can’t walk back on that without incurring huge costs for retrofitting existing cars and development cost for overhauling their tech stack. Meanwhile, they would’ve sunk money and time pursuing a much harder problem. If they had used additional sensors from the beginning, they could’ve provided much more value to their paying customers by now. Edit: Just saw your edit. > From what I've seen of Tesla's FSD beta, it could very probably be T4 if Tesla geofenced certain areas and worked out any particular kinks manually. Yes, that’s what they should have done. Make realistic promises. I mean, you’re talking about making it work on _any_ road, _any_ intersection and _any_ scenario. Without additional sensors and mapping, it’s seems pretty unlikely (if not impossible) to me. Certainly given the timeframe Elon Musk promises.
Dylan16807 6y ago
Part of the question is how useful the data sent back by random customer-owned vehicles is. It's your own fleet that's collecting the really good detailed data. And adding LIDAR to your own fleet isn't tremendously expensive. You don't have to worry about an extra 10k per vehicle crippling your sales.
- fastball 6y ago
  Clearly adding LIDAR do your own fleet is tremendously expensive, otherwise Waymo would have 10,000 LIDAR-equipped cars driving around.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    The reason they have less than a thousand cars isn't because LIDAR is expensive. They've spent billions of dollars and enough LIDAR units to double their fleet size would only cost 3-4 million.

Diederich 6y ago

This is a pretty accurate analysis. Level 4+ using only cameras is risky and aspirational. In truth, most of Elon Musk's high level goals are risky and aspirational. So far his record is pretty good, but eventually one or more are likely to fail.

Dylan16807 6y ago
Look at how many times spacex has drastically changed their hardware plans while designing something. The track record of making things work is good, but it's a very different kind of problem when you're allowed to redesign.